The voice of Misunderstanding (a comic prologue)

[In a wood of Corinth there lay exposed
a baby boy and girl, 'til an old woman
passing by came to their rescue.
Unable to care for both, she took the girl's
raising upon herself] most willingly,
and gave the boy to the mistress of this house,
who was a wealthy dame devoid of children.
That's how it all began. Then, some years later,
with ills of war and Corinth's troubles
mounting, the old woman fell destitute.
Her girl, nearly grown (just now you saw her),
had attracted an impassionate suitor.
To the care of this young man, of a family
of Corinth, she committed the girl,
as though she were the mother. Already advanced
in wasting away, and looking to life's katastrophē
as a nearby thing, she disconcealed unto the girl
her fortune: to have been a foundling, found
swaddled in this cloth - and at that, produced it
to her - and identified her unsuspected brother,
reasoning that in case of need
for mortal assistance, her only natural bond
was to him, and fearing lest some mishap
befall the two through me, [the goddess Agnoia, viz.]
Misunderstanding. A rich party-boy is
how she saw the brother, and none too steady
the army officer who was the pretty young thing's suitor.
With that, she died, and [sure enough,] the officer's
just bought the house next door. Neighbor now
to her brother, the girl's revealed nothing, hating
to mar his bright outlook on what Fortune
gave him to enjoy. But chance observation
soon showed her his impetuous nature,
as well as a habit of wandering round her house
with an intent. One night at dusk she was
sending her maid out for something, when he
happened to spy her at the gates, and hastened
up to her with hugs and kisses. Knowing him
for her brother she did not flee - but the snoop who came
upon them saw, and told of how he went off saying
he wanted to see her at greater leisure, and of her tears,
standing there wailing that she wasn't free
to act that way. The upshot's blazed up to
the present moment, stoking his rage
to such a height - 'twas I who stoked it
past his nature, in order that secrets start to
open up in what follows, and everyone's true family
be revealed. So if anybody find this in bad taste
or a source of scandal, save it.
Through a god do evils turn out good.
To you who favor us with spectatorship
I bid farewell. Let what follows not be lost on you.

Menander, The Girl With Close-Cropped Hair 117-171

Al-Zahiriyya Library, Damascus (undated)

Madmen who were poets 6

The poet Abu 'l-Bakhtarī said: The tales I used to hear of Abū Fahma, a madman of Baghdad with a gift for poetic improvisation, led me to seek him out. Our meeting came about in a lane of the city, where I said to him, "How are you today, Abū Fahma?" He replied in verse:

   I have reached the edge of my precipice. Through you
      the way lies open to the wellsprings of my ruin.
   I see you turning, but not toward me.
      Whose heart is least corrupt you least attend.
   O you whose estrangement prolongs my pining:
      may you be struck with pining worse than mine!

Abu 'l-Bakhtarī said: At this, I withdrew a bouquet of narcissus from my sleeve, and pressed it on him with my wishes that God prolong his life. He stood smelling them for a time, then delivered these verses:

   On my wedding day, there came from the South hard-spattering,
      black and brilliant [clouds] wreathed with rain.
   Then kicked in the East Wind with its fecundating showers,
      and the curtailment of our nuptials was hard to bear.
   Our babe was born still. Labor pains came on,
      and there was parturition, and that was the issue.
   Springtime wove a shroud, and as one hand
      the dew and breeze gave color to its fabric.
   It was this flower's composite yellow, white petals
      cupping ornaments of unsmithed gold 
   on emerald columns raised aloft with the morning,
      like unto the sun in eye-like splendor.

Al-Hasan ibn Hāni' [better known as Abū Nuwās] said: I paid a call on Mānī al-Muwaswas, who delivered these verses:

   A live man's poem is uttered to you by a dead man.
      Stuck between death and life, he stands [right here].
   Vicissitudes have whittled his frame, and at his end
      he stays in hiding from the rest of creation.
   To look me over, inspecting my persona,
      is to find not one iota of my former charm.

I then went on [continued Abū Nuwās] until I met Ju'ayfirān al-Muwaswas, an elder of the Banū Hāshim with a speech impediment. Around his neck he wore a golden collar with a silver chain. He asked me, "Where did you crawl out of, Hasan?" "Mānī's house," I answered. "Here's one for Mānī's mother," he said and, calling for pen and paper, told me to write this down:

   Under cover of the night, the rooster makes no sound
      - except on nights I strive along the pathway to your door.
   Not every eyeful leads the peeper to delight! 
      At night, the joys of bed-rest are what's best,
   - except on nights I mount the dark,
      desiring you. Braving a pair of linked shackles,
   I am playing with my life when I come to you. 'Sweet Hope!'
      I am calling out, amid the night's black suit,
   to the stoker of the flames licking [this] wretch's heart,
      taking no care for his welfare nor his reputation.
   For treachery and fickleness your nature is unsurpassed
      by all the djinn and mortal men living put together now.

With that [continued Abū Nuwās], he told me to tear up what I had from Mānī, which I did.
      I went on until I encountered ‘Adrad the Afflicted. Ringed by a crowd of boys, he was slapping his face and weeping as he wailed aloud, "O people! Bitter is the taste of separation!" So I asked him, "Abū Muhammad [which was ‘Adrad's byname], where are you coming from?" "Seeing off the pilgrims bound for Mecca," he said. "What makes it so hard to bear?" I asked. "Some of my kinsmen travel with them," he said. "Did you deliver a poem on the occasion?" I asked. He responded that he had done so, and recited:

   They departed Thursday morning, and I bid them farewell
      when, taking up their burdens, they took their leave.
   As they turned to go, my soul turned with them.
     'Come back!' I said. 'Come back to where?' said she.
   To a rattling skeleton empty of blood,
     and bare of flesh but for a pair of eyes
   washed by grief, and the shell of an ear
     defiant in its deafness to all blame."

Continued from The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih

For the conclusion to Madmen Who Were Poets, see the (St. Mark's) Poetry Project Newsletter no. 250 (Feb/March 2017), 8-12, where the whole of Ibn Abd Rabbihi's chapter appears with an introduction by the translator. Many thanks to Betsy Fagin

News of the pillar-priesthood of old Syria

The temple occupies a hill at the very center of Bambyce. Two walls run round it, one of them ancient and the other one dating to a little before our time. The temple's gateway is placed so as to admit the northern breeze and measures 100 fathoms [~182 meters]. Within these gates stand the pillars [Gk. phalloi] erected by Dionysus, rising to 300 fathoms [a fabulous height which some editors emend to 30 fathoms without troubling over the no-less-fabulous 100-fathom gate]. Twice a year, a man ascends to the top of one of these pillars and dwells there for seven days. The cause for his so doing is variously explained. Majority opinion has it that he converses with the gods on high, asking for blessings on behalf of all of Syria, and that the gods attend his prayers from up close. Others take it for a commemoration of the disaster that struck in Deucalion's day, when the flood sent people fleeing to the mountains and the tree-tops. I find this explanation unbelievable. I think these rites are performed in adoration of Dionysus, and I explain them thus: When they parade the phalloi in honor of Dionysus, they seat wooden figurines on them. The reason for this custom I will not mention - but I will give my opinion that the man who mounts the pillar does so in emulation of those little wooden men.

His method of ascent is this. Looping a cord around himself and the pillar snugly, he goes up it, following a path of wooden toe-holds. As he climbs, he cinches the cord higher, flipping it upward like a pair of reins. (Those who have seen palm trunks scaled in Arabia, Egypt or anywhere else will be able to picture what I'm talking about.) On completing his ascent, he lets down a second, longer cord that he has with him, in order to haul up whatever he pleases in the way of lumber, blankets and other gear, out of which he fashions a nest-like hut in which to sit out the above-mentioned duration. When devotees visit, they cast coins of gold, silver, and sometimes coppers into a container, saying their names as they do so. A man stationed at the pillar's bottom announces them to the man at its top, who says a prayer on behalf of each person named, amplifying his prayer with a brass noise-maker that he rattles loudly.

The man atop the pillar is barred from sleep. If sleep overtakes him, a scorpion climbs up and rouses him with a nasty sting - or so it is said in pious legends of the cult, for whose strict truth I shall not vouch. To me, the fear of falling would seem to suffice as a sleep deterrent. And with that I conclude my account of the pillar-climbers.

Lucian, On the Syrian goddess 28-29.

Madmen who were poets 5

Abu 'l-‘Abbās [al-Mubarrad] attributes these verses to al-Mānī al-Muwaswas:

   The cheeks on him are white and red:
      red in their middles and white at the rim.
   Thin but dewy, like a cup's glass walls
      streaked by swirling wine within.

Al-Mubarrad also said: Once, I got caught in a rainstorm, which quickly abated, and along came Mānī al-Muwaswas, saying:

   Don't mistake for real rain
      the rain that fell just now.
   A single tear from my eye
      flows more copiously, when
   assailed by the gloom
      of my worried thoughts.
   This is what it's like to watch
      the change of heart inside a friend's bosom.

Mānī al-Muwaswas went up to Abū Dulaf [al-'Ijlī] and said:

   The look in your eye 'mid the enemy host
      saves you the trouble of taking out swords.

"By God!" said Abū Dulaf, "no poet has ever praised me so well," and ordered ten thousand dirhams be given to him. But Mānī declined to take them. "It's all the same to me as half a dirham's worth of harisa," he said.

Also by Mānī al-Muwaswas:

   Grazing on hearts, some gazelles are intent
      on necklaces. But in my heart there is just grass.
   My life is forfeit to gazelles. Instead of antlers
      they are rubied and empearled with bangles of gold.
   O beauty who stole mine eye unwittingly,
      seldom though the stolen glance unwitting be!
   The beauty of her eyes elicited my heart from me,
      and I gave it over, little heeding its worth.
   If they do not look my way, the attraction's finished.
      What good are eyes to me if she declines?
   A thief and his hand are soon separated,
      but hearts are for stealing at no such penalty.

‘Alī ibn al-Jahm rode up on a man in the grip of a brain-fever who was encircled by a hostile crowd. On spotting him, the man took hold of his horse's bridle and said:

   Do not join the company of
      wastrels before me. I swear by the prerogative
   of the One Who aggrieves my life with them,
      and the One Whose forgiveness I beg for them:
   compared to the fallen of their own number,
      these are fallen further still.

His rolling gaze then fixed on a shapely boy with a handsome face, and he rent his tunic, saying:

  "And this one, their most nobly favored,
      now treats me with surpassing baseness!

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (continued)

The dawn of fabric

Whatever myth of origins you believe, the world's first man was surely naked and unclothed when his Potter threw him, before his untimely and unlicensed grab at [the fruit of the Tree of] Knowledge. But enough of esoteric lore. Let's have one of yours instead - the Egyptian tale set down by Alexander for his mother to read about the age of Osiris, back when Ammon, rich in sheep, came out of Libya. It was in their company, the Egyptians declare, that Mercury chanced to brush his hand over a ram, and was so pleased by its softness that he separated a sheep from its fleece. The material's pliancy moved him to keep working it, and at his continued pinching a thread streamed forth. This he wove using a technique he had practiced on strips of linden-bark. Meanwhile, you give credit to Minerva for all wool-craft and construction of looms, even though the work at Arachne's shop was better done.

Tertullian, On the philosopher's cloak III.4-5

Madmen who were poets 4

The grammarian Muhammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad said: En route to Wāsit from Baghdad, we took a detour to the Monastery of Ezekiel [at al-Nu'māniyya] to see the madmen there. Their madnesses were all of kinds known to us, or so we thought until we spied a well-kept youth in laundered clothes sitting apart from the others. "If any," we said, "then this one." So we approached him with a pious greeting, which he did not return. "What's the matter with you?" we asked him. He said:

   God knows how sad I am.
      To none other can it be described.
   My soul is two, one in this land
      while another land keeps the other.
   The one stuck here can endure no more.
      The hide around it is about to give out.
   I believe the other soul to be in the same state.
      By my troth, hers is the present soul's matter.

"Well done, by God!" I said to him. At this, he flailed as if throwing something at us, saying, "Who says 'Well done' to the likes of me?"
      Al-Mubarrad said: We were making haste to get away from him, when the young man said, "Come back, by God, I beseech you, until I recite for you another poem. Then you can say whether it's well or poorly done." So we went back to him and said, "Recite." He began:

   Just before dawn, when the palomino camels were knelt
      for their saddles and a shapely cargo to trudge away with,
   when, face to face through a gap in the curtain [of her howdah]
      she looked out at me through eyes engorged with tears,
   at the wave of her hand [henna-stanched] like a bough of ‘anam,
      I called out to the camel, 'Let your hind legs not bear [her] away!'
   I wail for the split that undid what she and I had,
      the split that came down, that undoing split when they moved off.
   Palomino driver! Stay their steps, that we may lengthen our farewell.
      Palomino driver! Your haste speeds my ending.
   Never to renounce my desire to be with them, for the rest of my life,
      I wish I knew: what did they with the rest of theirs?

We said to him, "They must have died." At this, he cried out, "Then I, by God, die also!" and fell to all fours, stretched out and died. And we did not leave the place until we had seen to his burial.

[A shorter variant of the same report.]  Al-Mubarrad said: On entering the Monastery of Ezekiel, we were met by a madman with a rock in his hand. "O assembly of my brethren, harken unto me!" he said as the people scattered. Then he began to recite:

   Many's the soul of an eminent man
      reduced to moaning without remit,
   who wheels to face the host in battle
      but shrinks from single combat.

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi (continued)

Recounted also in the Thousand and One Nights, the Meadows of Gold of al-Mas‘ūdī, the Letting People Know of al-Itlīdī, et alibi.

Madmen who were poets 3

Abu 'l-Wāsi‘ [a companion of the poet Abū ‘Īsā Sālih al-Rashīd] was in the company of his sons when a poet of the madmen called and asked permission to perform an ode. Abu 'l-Wāsi‘ declined, but the poet importuned until his resistance fell. After the final verse:

       Irrefutable man, on this day you are their head,
          and around you the cream of your eminent sons!

Abu 'l-Wāsi‘ said to him: "If you would only leave us en masse" (lit. "head by head").
      It is said that a mad poet of the Bedouin visited Nasr ibn Sayyār and declaimed a poem composed of one hundred amatory verses and only two lines of praise. "By God," said Nasr to him, "the words of your poem are as graceless as their meaning. All your effort was spent on amatory prelude, with nothing left over for panegyric!" The poet said, "I can fix that." So he came back the next morning with a poem that began:

       Can you make out the house of Umm al-Ghamr?
         —Leave that! and let's have a poem in praise of Nasr.

"Neither one of these [is any good]," said Nasr.
      One of the scholars said: "For sheer hermeneutic depravity, the only thing I have heard to rival the Rāfida was something a madman of Mecca said about a poem [by al-Farazdaq]. This man said, 'The Banū Tamīm are the biggest liars I have ever heard. In the poem:

      [He Who hung the sky has built for us
          a house whose columns soar above all others.
       The house the Sovereign built is ours, and what
          Heaven's Arbitrator builds cannot be shaken.]
       The house in whose courtyard Zurāra sits arrayed,
          and Mujāshi‘ and Nahshal, father to horsemen...

The Banū Tamīm claim these names belong to their own!' " [As is the case, Mujāshi‘ and Nahshal being direct ancestors of the poet himself.]
      The scholar said: "I asked him, 'In your view, what do they mean?' He said, 'The "house" is the house of God, and Zurāra is the stone that is "buttoned" [zurrirat] around it. Mujāshi‘ is the well of Zamzam, whose water is "coveted" [jushi‘at], and "Father to Horsemen" is the mountain of Abū Qubays in Mecca.' I said to him, 'And Nahshal?' For a whole hour he thought it over, then said, 'It is the tall black lampstand of the Ka‘ba. That is what Nahshal is.' "

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (continued)

High and low estate in the world to come

FRIEND. Tell me, Menippos: Those who lie in lofty above-ground tombs, replete with images and epitaphs and upright slabs - do they command more honor in the underworld relative to the common run of dead?

MENIPPOS. You've got it backwards, guy! Even Mausolus - the Carian made famous by his tomb - if you had seen him you would still be laughing, I am sure, so despicable was the cranny in which he was flung. Far from bringing him distinction among the rabble of the other dead, the extent of his monument's benefit was that a burden of equivalent weight pressed down on him. The tenant of any plot that Aiakos marks off must be content to lie wedged within its ambit, you see, be it no more than one foot square.
      Buddy, you'd get an even bigger laugh if you could see the kings and satraps over us reduced to beggary, salt-fishmongering and teaching the alphabet. By all who happen by they are abused and smacked about the head like no-account chattel. Philip of Macedon is given out as a cobbler-for-hire of rotten sandals, and when he was pointed out to me in his corner I could control myself no longer. And the Polycrateses, Xerxeses and Darii of the world could be seen panhandling at every fork in the road.

Lucian, Menippos 17

Pyroglossia

Brothers, don't let too many of you become teachers. Error is common to everyone, of course, but we who teach are subject to even sterner judgment. The consummate man is he whose discourse is free from error, because he maintains a hold on the bridle to his whole body. So do we steer whole horse's bodies, when we put bridle-bits in their mouths, in order that they obey. And behold the ships: big as they are and driven by the crashing winds, they are steered by a tiny rudder in whatever direction the pilot pleases. This is how the tongue works: a small appendage, it makes grandiose declarations. Behold the quantity of timber kindled by a tongue-sized fire!

The tongue is itself a fire. Among our appendages, the tongue was installed as an ornament of iniquity, defiling our whole body and setting alight the wheel of coming-into-being with a flame caught from Gehenna. Humankind is capable of enslaving every stripe of beast and bird, every reptile and creature of the sea, and has done so; but the tongue is something no human being has ever enslaved - an unsteady evil, swollen with deadly venom. We bless the Lord and Father with it, and with it we curse [our fellow] human beings, who were born into God's likeness. Brothers, it should not happen that curse and blessing issue from the same mouth. Do fresh and stagnant water bubble up from the same spring? My brothers: can fig trees put forth olives? or grapevines figs? No more than seawater can be made fresh to drink.

James 3:1-12

Madmen who were poets 2

[‘Abd al-Rahmān Muhammad ibn ‘Ubayd Allāh] al-‘Utbī said: Abū Wā’il said to my father, "Despite my dementia, if you ask me about poetry you'll find that I know a thing or two about it." My father said, "Do you compose any poetry yourself?" "Yes," said Abū Wā’il, "much better than yours. Here's one of mine:

   If, after my ribs lie buried, their weeping forgotten,
      Jawmal would only speak to me,
   I bet my bones would answer her.
      I bet my old carcass would spring back to life."

My father said to him, "Not bad, except that the woman's name is ill-chosen.' Abū Wā'il said: "In reality her name is Juml, but I improved it." My father said to him, "God save us from the dementia that makes you think so."
      My father also told me that Abū Wā’il recited to him:

   When it hurts this much to part from a stranger,
      how much more when from a lover's side [min habībi]?
   My heart is stupefied with longing
      when I remember he is dead [yamūtu].

"That doesn't even rhyme!" my father told him. "One verse ends with bā’ (ب), the other tā’ (ت)." "And you cannot supply the missing point?" said Abū Wā’il. "Furthermore," my father said, "the voweling is off. One verse has a genitive case ending where the other ends in an indicative verbal suffix." "I say," replied Abū Wā’il, "when faced with difficulty you supply no point."

When the mother of Sulaymān ibn Wahb al-Kātib passed away, a lunatic scribe named Sālih ibn Shīrzādh regaled him with an elegy, reciting:

   By what happened to Umm Sulaymān we are laid low
      as if at a blow from the amputator's sword.
   You were the reins of the house, Umm Sālim; now,
      the house's reins have wound up in the grave.

Ibn Wahb said, "When was one of God's creatures so mistreated? To lose one's mother and hear her mourned with such a [crappy] poem, in which my name is changed from Sulaymān to Sālim!"
      Another verse of Sālih ibn Shīrzādh's goes like this:

   Do not liken the silent fart to a curative;
      the audible fart is the true Ādharītūs [Adrestos?]

From The Necklace Without Peer of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (continued)